


Miles Away

by LiraelClayr007



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (or something like that), Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse (Supernatural), Angst, Friends With Benefits, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:07:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23099080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiraelClayr007/pseuds/LiraelClayr007
Summary: He doesn’t speak. Mornings are best when neither of them breaks the silence. But he lets himself look; there’s not even an unspoken rule about that.Lean, muscled form. Endless constellations of freckles. Calloused hands. Sandy hair, grown too long. He wants to brush it back, but balls his hands into fists instead. Later he’ll have half-moons on his palms, the memory of fingernails digging into flesh.He avoids the eyes. There’s too much to see, too much to give away, when eyes are involved. Safer to look away.A few minutes later the screen door slams shut and Cas is alone.“Goodbye, Dean,” he says to no one.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	Miles Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bend_me_shape_me](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bend_me_shape_me/gifts).



> Thanks, Vanessa, for helping me find the ending. And the title. (Did you actually write this whole thing? 😂)

It’s still dark, out here in the deep woods, but the sliver of sky he can see through the threadbare curtains is turning grey along the horizon. Sunrise is coming soon.

Too soon.

Cas hears a bird sing, and hears another answer. It’s a strange thing, the world falling into chaos but the birds singing to greet the sun like it’s any other day. Maybe to them it is. Maybe it’s nothing to them that there are fewer humans every day, that there are almost no angels left, that the ones who are left stopped caring ages ago. Maybe life is simple, when you’re a bird. Sing, eat, fly, make more little birds to start the cycle over again.

He saw a squirrel yesterday too. A _squirrel_. He didn’t mention it to anyone, someone would have killed it for the meat. They’re running awfully low, and even a few mouthfuls would be worth the bullet.

Most of the other animals have...what? Died? Run off? Gone into early hibernation? He has to bite back a scornful sound at the thought of hibernation in the middle of summer; it’s welling up in his throat but at the last moment he stops himself, remembering that the soft, slow breathing in his bunk isn’t coming from him.

He almost wishes _he_ could go into hibernation. Or run away.

Almost.

He’s trying to find the right word for the color of the sky (midnight blue, he decides, even though it must be near six) when the breaths next to him hitch. Then there’s a drawn-out yawn, some languid stretching, from the form pressed against him.

He doesn’t speak. Mornings are best when neither of them breaks the silence. But he lets himself look; there’s not even an unspoken rule about that.

Lean, muscled form. Endless constellations of freckles. Calloused hands. Sandy hair, grown too long. He wants to brush it back, but balls his hands into fists instead. Later he’ll have half-moons on his palms, the memory of fingernails digging into flesh.

He avoids the eyes. There’s too much to see, too much to give away, when eyes are involved. Safer to look away.

A few minutes later the screen door slams shut and Cas is alone.

“Goodbye, Dean,” he says to no one.

He skips breakfast, walks in the woods for a few hours instead. He doesn’t eat much. He knows his body needs the fuel, but part of his brain still holds onto a sliver of angelic thought, the idea that food is for humans and he’s above that base need. Maybe someday his body will just quit, just let go of the earth and drift away. That wouldn’t be so bad. He has no idea if he has a soul, and no idea what would happen to a fallen angel’s soul at death anyway, but this place, this life...he’s not sure it’s worth holding onto anymore.

Someone should probably yell at him for going out alone, but if any of the lookouts see him no one says anything. No one really knows what to make of him, the half crazy fallen angel. Is he only half crazy? That might be giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He’d swallowed a few... _somethings_...before he’d left the cabin, and he’s feeling pretty good. No, he doesn’t feel good, he never feels good anymore. But he feels nothing, which is better than normal. The itch between his shoulder blades is gone for the moment. He forcefully pushes that thought aside. It never leads to anything positive. Anything helpful.

No, it’s not good, this floaty, nothing feeling. But it’s better than...the other thing.

Suddenly there is too much green, too much moss, too many leaves. Green hurts, stabs that place deep inside he keeps trying to forget. He squeezes his eyes shut, chokes on the wet, heavy air. Did it rain last night? He doesn’t remember. But it’s summer, and hot, and he can’t breathe. His stomach revolts against the drugs and the nothingness; he grabs the trunk of a tree and wretches. There’s nothing in his body to lose, but his stomach tries again and again, until the muscles across his abdomen scream and he passes out. Somewhere in the back of his mind he welcomes the bliss of unconsciousness

The familiar beams of his ceiling confuse him when he opens his eyes. He doesn’t know where he fell asleep, but it wasn’t here. All he remembers is green, and pain, and then nothingness.

“Dumb son of a bitch.”

A voice interrupts his confused tumble of thoughts, the only voice that can make him pay attention to anything at all anymore. He turns his head, looking for the source, but pain shoots through his head, goes straight to his gut. He wretches. Warm, calloused hands ease him to a sitting position, gently rub his back.

Those hands, he knows their touch. They aren’t supposed to be gentle. They’re never gentle.

He won’t allow them to be gentle.

Tears threaten. Cas closes his eyes, fighting to keep the traitorous tears at bay. He’s not supposed to cry. Angels don’t cry. And he may not be an angel anymore, but he does everything in his power to stop himself from having _feelings_.

“What were you thinking? Were you even thinking? Dammit Cas, you’re gonna kill yourself one of these days. You were passed out in the middle of the woods for god only knows how long, anything could have happened. Do you even see that? Do you even care anymore?”

“God doesn’t know. He’s not paying attention to any of us anymore.”

Cas pulls away from the touch of those hands.

He aches for the touch of those hands.

They sit in silence for what seems like an eternity to this human body, but is probably only a minute or two. Maybe three. Then, “Sometimes I wonder, Cas. Could things have ever worked out? With us?”

He doesn’t move. He can’t move. The question has no answer.

“I hate this, Cas. This having you but _not_ having you thing. You give me your body, but that’s not _you_. Conversation is off limits. You won’t even look me in the eye.” The voice, the flame to his moth, won’t give up. “Cas. Baby. Talk to me. Please.”

The ‘baby’ stings. The ‘please’ almost gets him. But he knows. It’s better this way, to turn away from hope. To instead feel the flight, the blissful moment when Dean is fucking him into his mattress, fingers digging into his arms or his hips, and he spills across his own stomach and Dean, feeling him spasm, loses control and pounds relentlessly one, two, three more times and then fills him up from the inside out. That moment, that tiny speck of time, lets him feel something real on this planet of false gods and endless nothing.

So he turns his face to the wall.

Dean is angry. Cas can feel his skin nearly vibrating with the frustration of being denied.

“I wanted you even back then, you know. Back before the world ended. Your dorky little head tilt, your perfect sex hair, just begging for my fingers to run through it. God, even the finger quotes.” All this is low, even, conversational. Then his voice breaks. “And then you’d look at me, look _inside_ me, and tell Sa– tell someone we had a ‘profound bond.’ I was gone, Cas. I was all yours.”

He stands, agitated. “But you were untouchable. Pure. So far above me I could only look, and dream. I didn’t even hope.”

Sometimes Cas can feel the tiny shreds of grace still within him, the traces of himself, whirling through this broken, human body. The minute bits of grace betray him now, singing, calling out to Dean with longing. Dean leans closer; it’s almost immeasurable, but Cas notices, and he wonders if Dean can feel the longing the way Cas used to be able to feel Dean’s prayers.

Cas wants Dean. He wants all of him: his heart, his body, his smile, his kiss. He wants the whisper of his own name in Dean’s voice, breathed into his ear from lips so close he can feel the heat of Dean’s breath. He wants to stare into green eyes, to let those eyes look back at the tattered remnants of his soul.

But he is too broken. And Dean would turn away in disgust and despair if he could see, if he knew of the emptiness inside Cas.

This is better. Coming together in the silent darkness, tearing down walls to claw at one another and then rebuilding the fortifications. It’s better.

Safer.

“Cas.”

He feels the briefest touch on his shoulder, and there is a crack in Dean’s voice.

“Cas,” Dean says again. “Who knows how much time we have left. Shouldn’t we try to actually _live_?”

There is too much pain in living. He scratches at his arm; his skin feels too tight again, like he’s too big inside and there’s nowhere to put all of himself. He scratches harder, trying to break the skin, to make space. It actually hurts; the drugs must have worn off.

Hands–warm, calloused, gentle–close around his scratching fingers. “Stop. You’re hurting yourself.”

“You’re too late,” Cas says, but he lets Dean move his hand.

Lets Dean _hold_ his hand.

Time passes. Dean says, “It’s going to be okay.”

Cas doesn’t know if Dean’s talking to him or to himself.

Moments or ages later, Dean says, “I mean it, Cas. It’s going to be okay.”

Something flares in Cas’s chest. He doesn’t know the feeling, but it’s sharp, and warm, and somehow soft too. He doesn’t like human feelings, wishes he could banish them to wherever his wings went. Instead he slowly, slowly rolls onto his back. Dean still sits on the edge of the bed, awkwardly holding Cas’s hand.

Cas lets his eyes travel upward, along Dean’s chest and throat, across his lips, his nose. He pauses, steadies himself, then looks up that little bit more, across mere millimeters.

Or miles.


End file.
